In this course, we read back and forth through Greek literary history from the 1980s to the 1930s, 1920s, 1880s and 1820s, mapping contemporary critical concerns and contemporary literary works onto earlier works, as well as examining how previous generations of writers influence contemporary writers. We will focus on questions of women’s writing, gender and sexuality, as well as how translation conceals and reveals these questions. Texts include works by Anghelaki-Rooke, Cavafy, Dimoula, Elytes, Laina, Mastoraki, Ritsos, Sachtouris, Seferis, Sikelianos and Solomos. This method of reading back and forth not only highlights what is linguistically familiar about contemporary writing and more foreign about earlier writing, but makes questions of canon formation and literature as a national institution integral to the process of studying Modern Greek poetry. Students will create portfolios of their own translations of the poems we read and discuss them with poets and translators over the course of the semester. No knowledge of Greek is necessary, although an extra-credit tutorial will be offered for Greek speakers wishing to read the poetry in the original. Class discussion and texts will be in English. Works also available in Greek for those students wishing to read in Greek. Assignments may be completed in English or Greek.

Instructor: A. Frajlich-Zajac

This seminar is designed to offer an overview of Post-1989 Polish prose. The literary output of what is now called post-dependent literature demonstrates how political transformations influenced social and intellectual movements and transformed the narrative genre itself. The aesthetic and formal developments in Polish prose will be explored as a manifestation of a complex phenomenon bringing the reassesment of national myths, and cultural aspirations. Works by Dorota Maslowska, Andrzej Stasiuk, Pawel Huelle, Olga Tokarczuk, Magdalena Tulli and others will be read and discussed. Knowledge of Polish not required.

Instructor: E. Grimm

This course examines various literary, artistic, and cultural traditions that respond to some of the most recognizable Greek motifs in myth, theater, and politics, with the aim of understanding what these motifs might be offering to these traditions in specific social-historical contexts, as well as what these traditions bring to our conventional understanding of these motifs, how they reconceptualize them and how they alter them. The overall impetus is framed by a how conditions of modernity, postcoloniality, and globality fashion themselves by engaging certain persistent imaginaries of antiquity.Texts include various renditions of Antigone in African, Caribbean, Asian or Latin American traditions, poetry by Walcott, Cavafy, and Césaire, essays by Fanon, Soyinka, Senghor, and C.L.R. James.

Instructor: C. Harwood

A survey of the Czech, German, and German-Jewish literary cultures of Prague from 1910 to 1920. Special attention to Hašek, Čapek, Kafka, Werfel, and Rilke. Parallel reading lists available in English and in the original.

Dialectical approach to reading and thinking about the history of dramatic theatre in the west, interrogating the ways poetry inflects, and is inflected by, the material dynamics of performance. We will undertake careful study of the practices of performance, and of the sociocultural, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions animating representative plays of the Western tradition from the classical theatre through the early modern period; course will also emphasize development of important critical concepts for the analysis of drama, theatre, and performance. Specific attention will be given to classical Athens, medieval cycle drama, the professional theatre of early modern England, and the rival theatres of seventeenth century France and Spain. Writing: 2-3 papers; Reading: 1-2 plays, critical and historical reading per week; final examination.

Enrollment limited to 35 students. Critical introduction to theories of culture as they are related to the Middle East and South Asia. Enables students to articulate their emerging knowledge of these two regions and cultures in a theoretically informed language. Introduces theories of culture particularly related to the Middle East and South Asia. Theoretical debates on the nature and function of culture as a symbolic reading of human collectivities. Examines critical cultural studies of the Middle East and South Asia. Enables students to articulate their emerging knowledge of Middle East and Asian cultures in a theoretically informed language.

Instructor: A. Deuber-Mankowsky

This course will focus on the ways that jazz has been a source of inspiration for a variety of twentieth-century literatures, from the blues poetry of the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary fiction. We will consider in detail the ways that writers have discovered or intuited formal models and political implications in black music. Rather than simply assume that influence only travels in one direction, we will also take up some literary efforts (including autobiography, poetry, historiography, and criticism) by musicians themselves. What are the links between musical form and literary innovation? How can terms of musical analysis (improvisation, rhythm, syncopation, harmony) be applied to the medium of writing? How does music suggest modes of social interaction or political potential to be articulated in language? How does one evaluate the performance of a poem (in an oral recitation or musical setting) in relation to its text? Materials may include writings and recordings by Jacques Attali, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Kurt Schwitters, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Ella Fitzgerald, William Melvin Kelley, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Gayl Jones, Michael Ondaatje, Ed Pavlic, Joseph Jarman, Nathaniel Mackey, and Harryette Mullen, among others. Requirements: weekly response papers, a 5-7 pg. midterm paper and a 9-12 pg. final paper

Same as JAZZ W4900